Twitter reports 50 million tweets per day, 600 tweets per second

Twitter members are sending out 50 million tweets per day, an average of 600 tweets per second, the San Francisco microblogging service said Monday.

The statistics were revealed on the Twitter blog by Kevin Weil, a member of the company’s analytics team.

The post was particularly interesting since the privately held Twitter Inc. has not publicly disclosed statistics such as how many members use the service. Twitter’s peek into its tweet reports also comes at a time when the company is working on a business model that takes advantage of the number of people it reaches.

Weil said the number of tweets per day, according to the company’s internal reports, grew from 5,000 in 2007 to 300,000 in 2008.

By 2009, it was 2.5 million tweets, but Twitter experienced a huge growth spurt during the year as celebrities like Ashton Kutcher called attention to the service.

So Weil said the daily tweets increased 1,400 percent during the year to 35 million, even with spam tweets excluded.

By the end of 2009, there was speculation on the Web that Twitter useage had flattened. But in early January, CEO Evan Williams said Twitter had experienced its busiest day ever and was headed for an even busier day, although he didn’t reveal any specific details.

Last week, the Web measurement firm ComScore reported Twitter had 73.5 million unique visitors in January, an increase of about 8 percent from December. But ComScore only measures Web traffic, not how many Twitter members use mobile applications.

Also, a large number of tweets sent out come from a small percentage of Twitter members. Indeed, Weil hinted the company might reveal even bigger numbers in the future.

“Tweet deliveries are a much higher number because once created, tweets must be delivered to multiple followers,” he said. “Then there’s search and so many other ways to measure and understand growth across this information network. Tweets per day is just one number to think about. We’ll make time to share more information, so please stay tuned.”